Aliens: Dark Descent is the Prometheus of real-time strategy games

Aliens: dark descent is billed as a real-time action game, carefully avoiding the real-time strategy classification. This new classification is not a gimmick. Tindalos Interactive has produced a thrilling single-player experience that flirts with different genre traits while clearly offering a unique and ambitious approach. However, much like the divisive Alien franchise movie Prometheushis experiments struggle to maintain creative momentum.

Dark descent completely removes or purposefully narrows down the aspects of resource gathering, technology improvement and base building found in many RTS titles. There’s no real-time macro layer to speak of, with the moment-to-moment focus on the micro-actions of maneuvering your squad of four USMC soldiers. It is related to StarCraft campaign missions where you explore with just a handful of Terran marines. This highlights the tension surrounding specifically named characters and their survival: instead of ore and minerals, you worry about ammo and stress. And when one of your grunts is slaughtered – or worse, whisked away by an alien drone to be impregnated – it fosters sadness and regret. This is a relentless game of moments that stay with you.

You’ll be familiarized with this framework with a 45-minute tutorial, which also acts as a prologue to the larger story. This extended intro is welcome, as there are some quirks to the systems in play, and you need to get to grips with the unusual tactical options they offer.

The most advanced of those tactical systems are centered around command posts. You spend this resource to lay down cones of suppressive fire, fire powerful shotgun shots at close range, and spew walls of fire to protect your position. You can never pause the game, only resort to slow motion when you enter the command menu. It is imperative that you quickly become familiar with this system, as it is the core of tactical decision-making during the intense conflict.

But so is this tutorial Dark descent at its most mundane. The action sequences are boring and offer few interesting tactical decisions or opportunities for creativity. It flirts with danger by not trying to hook a new player, highlighting the game’s strengths, or entertaining cinematic combat. This precedes a similar storyline, which begins with a Weyland-Yutani corporate plot, complete with a disturbing synthetic human. There are moments later in the campaign that similarly slide into predictability, and it’s at these stages that the game risks losing its grip on your attention.

Much of the intrigue stems from the various subsystems that make up the texture of the combat. The actual clicking around and maneuvering is somewhat uninspired. In addition, you cannot send a lone trooper or a smaller fire team to defend a position or execute a flanking maneuver; the squad is forced to stick together. This keeps the action streamlined, but it also undermines some of the tactical depth. Plus, this can make for some repetition in ranges as you repeatedly try to maintain long, narrow lines of sight to force approaching hordes through choke points under your withering fire. However, it manages to keep things satisfyingly simple. The different environments are rich and fully realized in scope and vision. You travel through sprawling colonies and massive space docks with entire sections encased in a xenomorphic shell. All this is also greatly enhanced by the roster administration and open world aspects of the game. It is true in these periods of cautious, heavily armed exploration Dark descent really hurry up.

Image: Tindalos Interactive/Focus Home Entertainment

There are also moments of beauty and inventiveness. As you traverse massive sectors with both internal and external combat zones, you are unexpectedly overrun by xenomorphs of all shapes and sizes. The AI ​​adapts to your tactics and maneuvers around defensive vectors like sentry guns and walls of flame. You’re dealing with facehuggers and acid blood, and it feels like you’re really being hunted. Even the environment itself will occasionally turn against you, forcing your soldiers to deal with their mental trauma by locking themselves in rooms with welding torches.

Between missions, research new gear and unlock abilities with your various troopers. pour experience and resources back into your barracks. Clearly inspired by Firaxis’ XCOM games, this layer creates a beautiful loop of steadily increasing the strength of your soldiers, only to make them an even juicier target for the xenomorphs. It’s sharp and memorable, and it leads to some great emergent storytelling moments.

Where Dark descent goes beyond XCOM in mission selection. The campaign is somewhat linear, but it gives you a feeling of an open world by allowing you to discover new parts of the world map: different settlements and installations on the planet Lethe, which is going through a global crisis. While it is required that you complete the main story objectives in each sector, you can also return to each sector to pick up missing items and complete sub-tasks at a later date. Dark descentThe structure of the game even allows you to evacuate mid-mission, preserving the mental and physical health of your squad mates after it all gets sidetracked. I’ve had extreme moments of highs and lows as I’ve been evacuated multiple times to pursue certain objectives, salvage what I could, and put my team in the med-bay before redeploying with new roster members. Do this too often and the alien threat will increase over time. This creates the illusion of a persistent environment, one that evolves from its own autonomy.

Image: Tindalos Interactive/Focus Home Entertainment

Aliens: dark descent is sometimes ambitious, often to enjoy, but occasionally to rashness. While some may desire something more intimate and terrifying Alien Isolation Continued, this isometric tactical challenge is rich in consequences and rewards. This may not be the most cohesive or exceptional Alien video game we’ve seen, but it’s certainly remarkable and imaginative.

Aliens: dark descent is now available for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed using a retail copy from Focus Home Interactive. Vox Media has partnerships. These do not affect editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find additional information on Polygon’s Ethics Policy here.